FICTION.
LISMOYLE.•
Mas. CHOKER has been writing for more than thirty years, and though she has never improved on Diana Barrington and Pretty Miss Neville, she has never fallen much below the level reached in those delightful late Victorian romances and has attained it once more in Lismoyle. This consistency of achievement, though it has never carried her into the front rank, is the outcome of a happy combination of tempera- ment and experience. Her beat stories are the outcome of an Irish upbringing and a residence in India, and give a vivacious picture of station life alternating with scenes in the " onld country." They do not enter into serious competi- tion with Mrs. Steel's vivid presentment of bazaar life, or the seamy side of Anglo-Indian society as revealed by Mr. Kipling, nor do they possess the literary urbanity of Sir Henry Cunningham's Chronicles of Dv,sty pore or The Coeruleans. With the " basic " and " elemental " facts of life, sex problems, and introspection Mrs. Croker is not in the least concerned. But to say this is not to deny her the possession of many qualities which tend to the refreshment and delectation of the general reader—high spirits, an easy and natural style, geniality, and, within certain limits, a gift of faithful and incisive portraiture. Above all, her books are clean and wholesome, without laying themselves open to the charge of insipidity or effusiveness.
Students of recent fiction may note a superficial resem- blance between the plot of Lismoyle and Dan Russel the Fox. In each a rich English girl detaches herself from her sur- roundings, and spends a long holiday in a hunting country in Ireland. But the divergence is far greater than the similarity: there is no trace of the imitation, or worse, from which the authors of the immortal B.M. have suffered so severely as the penalty of their genius and popularity. The heroine of Dan Russel the Fox was a highly educated, typically English girl, whose intellectuality was tempered by the furor venaticus. Rhoda Kyle, the heroine of Lismoyle, though born in India and brought up in England, was at least Irish on the mother's side; she was answering the call of the blood in paying a long-deferred visit to her mother's home, while her horse- manship had been confined to an occasional ride in the Row. She lived in London with her widowed aunt, a middle- aged lady of immense vitality and ample fortune, who, at the opening of the story, bad just planned a six months' tour round the world. Rhoda was, of course, to be one of the party, but at the last moment the family doctor inter- vened. Five seasons in London had impaired a delicate constitution, and globe-trotting was out of the question. At this juncture Rhoda receives a cordial, not to say gushing, invitation from her mother's sister, Mrs. Conroy, whom she had never seen, to her place in the South of Ireland. Rhoda's soldier father, we learn, had never been forgiven by old Mr. Kyle for marrying the penniless Irish girl who died in giving birth to a daughter, and Captain Kyle soon after lost his life in an accident. The old man had been reconciled to his orphan granddaughter and made her his heiress, postponing her coming of age till she was twenty-five. Her English aunt, suspicious of adventurers, opposes the scheme of an Irish rest-cure ; but Rhoda, backed by Dr. Ambrose, carries her point, while consenting to keep her wealth in the dark, and starts for Lismoyle on the footing of a paying guest-
• Linolle. 137 B. Sr. Croker. London Hutchinson sad Co. Os.]
Mrs. Conroy having made it clear that her circumstances. were straitened — attended by a highly qualified maid. Adventures are to the adventurous, and Rhoda, though' am- expensive young woman, faces the shock of successive surprises with a stout heart. No one meets her at the station, and mistress and maid are reduced to accepting the assistance of a casual milk-cart. (Mrs. Croker, we may observe; is quite up to date in her references to creameries,. that most characteristic institution of modern Ireland.) When Rhoda and the much-harassed Abigail reach Lis- moyle, they find the house in disorder, no preparation for their reception, and Mrs. Conroy away in Dublin. Rhoda's second surprise is the return of the real master of the house, Captain Conroy, her aunt's stepson, who- had never been consulted in the matter, and was blissfully ignorant of the paying-guest arrangement. Niel. Conroy is the first blush horribly bored at the prospect of having to entertain the expensive Londoner, and, pending his step- • mother's return, contrives to board her out in great luxury at the palatial house of his neighbour Mrs. Donovan, a strapping Amazon, the widow of an Irish-Australian millionaire. But Rhoda's greatest surprise and Mrs. Croker's most triumphant creation is Mrs. Conroy herself. When we read her original letter to Rhoda, we set her down as a feckless, harum-scarum, but thoroughly generous woman. When we learn later on how scandalously she neglected the late Mr. Conroy—her second husband—how she wasted his substance, played into the hands of a rascally agent, and made it necessary for her stepson—a keen and popular soldier—to. abandon the profession he loved in order to save the situation for his sister and his stepmother, our blood boils within us. And it boils all the more as we read of her shady finance and how the admirable Niel and his excellent sister Bryda toil and slave to furnish Mrs. Conroy and her lazy,. lolloping daughter Doatie—a name truly appropriate to the surroundings—with fine clothes and to pay for their 'amuse- ments. But having thus wholly revised our judgment on Mrs. Conroy, we are obliged to revise it once again when she arrives on the scene, makes a conquest of Rhoda, and reasserts her tyranny over her willing slaves. If one can imagine such a thing as a lovable Harpy, that is perhaps the best description of this unscrupulous, imperturbable, but highly attractive, dainty, and wonderfully well-preserved baggage. For the further progress of Rhoda's education amid her new surround- ings we must refer our readers to the pages of Mrs. Croker's excellent story, in which they will make acquaintance with half- a-dozen refreshingly unconventional characters, including three elderly sportswomen and a ferocious laundress. Rhoda herself is sympathetic rather than exhilarating, and more prone to the effusion of tears than is commonly the case, with Georgian heroines. And the protestations made by Niel Conroy when he discovers that his cousin is not a poor relation but an heiress seem to us rather overdone. But with these reserva- tions, and a passing grumble at Mrs. Croker's exasperating use of unnecessary commas, we have nothing but praise for her latest novel.
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